John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“It’s the band, though, really. Isn’t that it, Rickenharp? You got it in your mind your career is dead. And that’s your whole identity. So you think you got to die, too. Rickenharp, buddy, it’s dumb to—”

“No, Hard-Eyes,” Rickenharp broke in. “Don’t tell me my big moment is dumb. No, you don’t see. This feels right. It’s like I been rehearsing my whole life for this gig…”

“Harpie…”

“No, I mean it. I ain’t hopin’ for nobody to talk me out of it. Now scan this, man…” His voice got some of its old excitement back in it. “The Jægernauts, they got cameras on ’em, at the stationary part of the axle, right? You can see ’em pop out of the slot when they want a good TV-shot to show the troops for the Triumph-of-the-Will scam. You know? They’ll show us getting plowed under and they’ll send it back—with sound, man! Back to that neofash hometown in California and show it to the kids and the young ones, and the kids’ll see me, they hear the tunes, they might react differently than what the fashes expect, right?”

“Maybe so, Harpie.” Not believing it for a moment. But let the guy have his fantasy.

“Anyway, I always wanted a live gig on TV. They made us lip-synch.”

He grinned and there was blood on his teeth.

So Hard-Eyes gave the primed syringes to Yukio, embraced Yukio and Rickenharp, and went to the stairs without a word. When he looked back, just before going through the door, he saw Yukio taking a red ribbon from his jacket, winding it around his head, kneeling in preparation for a Shinto ceremony.

Hard-Eyes and the refugees hid themselves in a tangle of cold, twisted black armor and waited for daylight. They were in the back of what had been an old half-track. Once, Bonham tried to hold Claire’s hand. She jerked it away from him and shut her eyes. His expression went hard, but he said nothing. After a while he climbed off the back of the half-track and went around the front, where, in the cover of an overturned truck, he pissed against the half-track’s engine.

Hard-Eyes could see only a bluish section of Claire’s face, enough to see she was awake. “Suppose we get through,” he said. “What will you do? If you could go anywhere, do anything? Dumb question, I guess: You’ll try to get back to the States.”

“No. Where’s this thing headquartered? The Second Alliance I mean.”

“The military headquarters? Main one is supposed to be in Sicily.”

“So why don’t you hit the island?”

“Not enough manpower—or seapower. NATO’s guarding it. NATO thinks—or claims it thinks—that the SA is just a privately owned peacekeeping force like it pretends to be. Sort of high-quality mercenaries subcontracted by the UN and NATO. So we got to get past NATO too. And those guys aren’t our enemies. But Steinfeld was working on a way to get in, before they found him.”

“He’ll try it, sooner or later.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want Praeger,” she said, her voice chillingly flat. “If we can get to the Second Alliance’s command, we can bring Praeger to justice.”

“Who’s Praeger?”

“We get out of Paris alive I’ll tell you about it.” Daylight wasn’t long in coming. Hot-metal blue edged the ragged, truncated skyline when they heard the first amplified note pealing over the square, that bizarre church bell again, declaring a new and electric morning.

They heard, from ten yards away, the captain of a passing neofash patrol burst out, “What the bloody ’ell is that ?”

Claire almost wept with silent laughter. She whispered, “What kind of music’s he going to play?”

“It’s mostly retro-rock, twentieth-century stuff… but it’s more than that,” Hard-Eyes murmured.

Rickenharp began with a bash-out of the Blue Öyster Cult’s “Cities on Flame with Rock ’n’ Roll,” slammed on to The Clash’s “London’s Burning,” and then segued into Lou Reed’s solo version of “White Light/White Heat.” Rickenharp had jacked a mike into one of the amps and he bellowed the lyrics in a voice that made Hard-Eyes sure Yukio had given them the shots. Rickenharp was coming on to his last high. The digital rhythm box started, thudding out a martial backbeat that shivered like controlled thunder from the faces of the wrecked buildings around the Étoile.

It was still dark enough for Hard-Eyes to lead the others through the shadows around the perimeter of the Étoile, in the ruins, and over the dead fountains, toward the Champs Élysées.

Now Rickenharp was segueing from a Sisters of Mercy cut to a Nine Inch Nails tune: “Head Like a Hole.” He yowled, “Head like a hole, black as your soul, I’d rather die than give you control!” his voice echoing thinly up and down the Champs-Élysées. And then an updated “Street-Fighting Man.” Each chord peacock-tailed out into beautiful distortion, echoing around the wide, breezy, broken space of the Étoile.

Hard-Eyes chuckled and hefted his assault rifle, muttered, “Christ. He’s pulling it off!” They were crouched behind an overturned troop transport truck. He peered out between a bent-out fender and the grille at the entrance to the street. Dozens of SA entrenched there, staring up at the arch, mouths agape. Maybe Rickenharp had been wrong about how they’d react… If they didn’t take the bait, Hard-Eyes and Claire were fucked…

Rickenharp, banged through some mid-1980s tunes. The Clash, Dead Kennedys, The Fall, New Order, U2, The Call, and Killing Joke’s “Requiem.” Into the nineties with Panther Modern’s “Sometimes It’s Better to Die.”

He paused, made a chord oscillate drunkenly, and yelled, “Hey! You pathetic wimps frightened of a guitar?” Bellowing it so loud his voice fuzzed in the amp. But they understood him. Louder now: “YOU! YOU LIMP-DICK INTESTINAL WORMS! YEAH, YOU, THE BRAIN-WASHED, PECKERWOOD BIGOTS! RIGHT: THE SHIT-EATING DUMB-FUCK RACIST PRODUCTS OF BACKWOODS COUSIN FUCKING! LET ME BE MORE EXPLICIT! I’M TALKING TO THE FAGGOT SA NAZIS SUCKING THEIR THUMBS OVER BY THE METRO SIGN! YOU PUSSIES SCARED OF A GUITAR? COME ON! COME ON, YOU COWARDS!”

There was another minute of debate amongst the SA. Then the fash commander gave the order—and the SA charged the arch, spraying its crown with automatics. Dust and chips of stone flew from the top, where Rickenharp howled on at them. “COME ON, YOU PHILISTINE PECKERWOODS, LET’S GO! ”

Yukio waited till the neofascists were halfway there before opening up on them. He’d set up two grenade launchers, already had them cranked for range.

Three explosions burst before the arch like giant flame-hands flashing open. Fragments of concrete and metal rained. Dust bloomed… and cleared.

As Rickenharp played the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy”…

Twelve of the Second Alliance assault force were sprawled there, broken and unmoving.

Six more kept coming—Yukio stopped them with short, precise machine-gun bursts. Another wave of them came on, took cover in shell-holes, began returning fire. Yukio kept moving, kept low, kept firing. He had a better angle for shooting than they did. And all the time Rickenharp’s guitar wailed and roared…

Yukio fired an M-83 round across the Étoile; it blew up in the commander’s tent, setting it on fire. Another M-83, and another. The SA ran helter-skelter for cover, their lines in confusion.

Beyond the burning tent, forty yards beyond, Hard-Eyes could see the metro entrance he wanted.

“Come on!” he shouted. “This is it! Run like a bastard!”

He took Claire’s elbow and—Bonham and Kurland close behind—they sprinted across the open side-street. They were almost there before the regrouping sentries spotted them.